Babies R Us: A Necessary Evil

Let me just start by saying I hate this store. I remember the first time I ever set foot inside one of these stores with my girlfriend who didn't have any kids either, I was pregnant with Bubu and had to register there so we decided to try and tackle the task together. I think she was crying at the end of it all. Maybe we were both crying. Anyways, that was probably 2 years ago and ever since then, I have had to go to this store in multiple cities for a wide variety of baby items and it is somehow always a very poor experience.

So yesterday, I needed an umbrella stroller, sensitive skin baby wipes, shoes for Bubu, and maybe an outfit for my unborn daughter. I could have gone to Target, my favorite store, but then I still would have to get the stroller at Babies R us so I thought, fine. I'll suck it up and go to the dreaded locale. We get there, find the umbrella stroller on clearance, yay! So how much is the clearance price? Not posted. And with Bubu in tow, there's a limited amount of time to dilly dally before a meltdown. Okay fine, I got over it and moved on to find a stroller with a price tag and picked that up instead. Then I go to the shoe section. None in his size. I mean not one pair of size 7 baby shoes. Seriously. Okay fine, moving along. I skip the outfit because I hate this store. I go to the checkout area and get in line where a seemingly harmless Hispanic grandma is wandering around. She must think I'm Hispanic also (a common misconception) and she takes a strange liking to Bubu. She proceeds to come over and actually touch his face while making goo goo ga ga sounds in Mexican. It's totally odd and I can tell Bubu is getting freaked out by her but what do you do? Tell her to F*** off and quit touching my kid in Mexican? I thought that might be inappropriate nor do I know how to say that in Mexican so I just stared at her and tried to console Bubu as much as possible until the checkout girl called me up.

I get to the checkout girl, everything normal here and we've escaped from the weird Hispanic grandma. Whew! I grab the stroller and put it in the cart and the other items are in a stack on the counter and I'm waiting for the girl to put it all in a bag for me because we're not at Costco, right? Bag up my stuff so I can get out of this hellish nightmare of a store please. The girl walks away, comes back, calls the next customer...okay I'm confused, why isn't she bagging up my stuff for me? Then the bitch asks me to move aside so the next customer can checkout. Just for some insight as to who I am, let me just tell you what I normally would have done if my child wasn't in front of me and I wasn't trying to set some kind of good example for him; I would have said, "Are you F***ing kidding me right now? Put my s*** in a bag you stupid whore. Why do you think I'm standing here in your s***** store, you loser?" BUT of course, I couldn't go that route in front of Bubu so instead I said, "Can I have a bag please?"

She didn't give me a bag by the way. She gave me a lame excuse that my baby wipe box would break through any bag she had, which was a false statement. I'm an engineer. I know these things. But so I left, with my extremely poor experience once again at Babies R Us.